CHAPTER XXVII.THE HUNTED SOLDIER.

CHAPTER XXVII.THE HUNTED SOLDIER.

The sun was just rising, and his red beams gilded the summits of the Alleghany Mountains, which in the glory of the early morning seemed as calm and peaceful as if their lofty heights had never lookeddown upon scenes of carnage and strife, or their tangled passes and dark ravines sheltered poor, starving, frightened wretches, fleeing for their lives, and braving death in any form rather than be recaptured by their merciless pursuers. There were several of these miserable men hiding in the mountain passes now, prisoners escaped from Salisbury and other points, but our story now has to do with but one, and that a young man, with a look of determination in his eye, and the courage of a Samson in his heart. He had suffered incredible hardships since the day of his capture. He had been stripped at once of his handsome uniform by the brutal Texans, who found him upon the field. His gold, which he carried about his person into every battle, had been taken from him, and in this condition he had been sent from one prison to another, until Salisbury received him. At first he had suffered but little mentally, for the ball which struck him down had left him with his reason impaired, and to him it was all the same whether friend or foe had him in keeping. Deprived of everything which could mark his rank as an officer, and always insisting that his name was “Rose,” he passed for a demented creature, whom the brutal soldiery delighted to torment. Gradually, however, his reason came back, and he woke to the full horrors of his condition. Then, like a caged lion he chafed and fumed, and resolved to be free. He could not die there, knowing that far away there was a blithesome little woman waiting for his coming, if, indeed, she had not ceased to think of him as among the living,—a state of things which he thought very probable, as he became aware of the fact that no one of his companions was acquainted with his real name. Rose was the only cognomen by which he was known, and the proud man shivered every time he heard that dear name uttered by the coarse, jesting lips around him. A horridsuit of dirty grey had been given him in place of the stolen uniform, and though at first he rebelled against the filthy garments, he began ere long to think now they might aid him in his escape, inasmuch as they were the garb of the Confederates. Day and night he studied the best means of escape, until at last the attempt was made and he stood one dark, rainy night, out on the highway a free man, breathing the pure breath of heaven, and ready to sell his life at any cost rather than go back again to the prison he had left. He had put his trust in God, and God had raised him up a friend at once, who had seen him leave the prison, and greatly aided him in his escape, just as he had aided others, knowing the while that by so doing he was putting his own life in jeopardy. But a staunch Unionist at heart, he was willing to brave everything for the cause, and it was through his instrumentality and minute directions that Will Mather had finally reached the shelter of the mountains which separate North Carolina from Tennessee. He had found friends all along the route, true, loyal men, who had periled their lives for him; brave tender women, whose hands had ministered so kindly to his wants, and who had so cheerfully divided with him their scanty meals, even though hunger was written upon their thin, haggard faces, and stared in their sunken eyes. And Will had taken down each name, and registered a vow that if ever he reached the North, these noble self-denying people should be rewarded, and if possible removed from a neighborhood where they suffered so much from privation and from the hands of their former friends, who, suspecting their sentiments, heaped upon them every possible abuse. Ragged, bareheaded, footsore and worn, he came at last, at the close of a June day, to the entrance of a cave in the hills to which he had been directed, and where, on the dampearth, he slept so soundly from fatigue and exhaustion that the morning sun was shining through the entrance to the cave, and a robin, on a shrub growing near, was trilling its morning song ere he awoke. The air, though damp from the water which trickled through the rocks, was close and stifling, and Will crept cautiously out from his hiding-place, and sitting down upon the ground drank in the beauty and stillness of the summer morning. Exactly where he was he did not know, but he felt certain that his face was toward the land where the Stars and Stripes were waving, and a thrill of joy ran through his veins as he thought of home and Rose, whose eyes by this time had grown so dim with looking for him. “God take me safely to her,” he whispered, when up the mountain side came the sound of voices and the tramp of feet. Creeping to the farthest side of the cave, and crawling down beneath the shelving rock where the cool waters were dripping, he hoped to avoid being seen. Up to this moment Will’s courage had never flagged, but now, when the Federal lines were not many miles away, and Rose and home seemed certain, he felt a great pang of fear, and his white lips whispered, “God pity me! God help me, God save me, for his own glory, if not for Rose’s sake,” then, knee-deep in the pool of water, he stood with his body nearly double, while the voices and the feet came nearer, and at last stopped directly in front of his hiding-place.

There were terrible oaths outside, and bitter denunciations were breathed against any luckless Union man who might be lurking near, and then the light from the entrance of the cave was wholly obscured, and Will saw that a man’s back was against the opening, as if some one were sitting there.Didthey know of the cave? Would they come in there, and if they did would they find him? Will kept asking himself these questionsand his breath came gaspingly as he knew that the man whose back barred the entrance to his hiding-place was the bitterest in his invectives against the Yankees, and the most anxious to find them. Something in his voice and language indicated both education and position superior to his companions, who evidently looked up to him as their leader, calling him “Square,” and acquiescing readily when, after the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, he suggested that they go higher up the mountain to a gorge where some of the fugitives had heretofore taken refuge.

Five minutes more and the footsteps and voices were heard far up the mountain, and Will breathed more freely again, and kneeling down in the pool of water, thanked God who had turned the danger aside, and kept him a little longer. He did not dare leave the cave, but he came out from under the rock, and stretching himself upon the ground tried to wring and dry the tatters which hung so loosely upon him.

It was two days since he had tasted food, and the long fast began to make itself felt in the keen pangs of hunger. Surely he could venture out toward the close of the day, he thought, and see if there were not berries growing in the ledges, and when the sun was setting he crawled to the mouth of the cavern, where just in the best place for him to see it lay a huge corn-cake and slice of bacon, wrapped nicely in a bit of paper.

How it came there he did not stop to ask. That it was there was sufficient for him then, and never had the costliest dinner, served on massive silver, tasted to him half so well as did that bit of bacon with the coarse corn bread.

Refreshed and encouraged he went back to his hiding-place, intending to start again on his perilous journeywhen the mountain path grew dark enough to warrant him in doing so. But soon after the sunsetting a fearful storm came up, and in the pitchy darkness of the cave Will listened to the bellowing thunder roaring through the mountain gorges, and saw from the opening the forked lightning which struck more than one tall tree near the place of his concealment. Fed by the rain which had fallen in torrents, the stream under the projecting rock was beginning to rise and spread itself over the surface of the cave. It was up to his ankles now, and it rose so rapidly that Will was thinking of leaving the cave and groping his way as well as he could to the westward, when his quick ear caught the sound as of two or more persons coming stealthily up the mountain side. Whoever they were they seemed to move with the utmost caution, and Will’s heart beat high as he hoped it might be some brother fugitives seeking the shelter of the cave. The gleam of a lantern, however, and the same voice he had heard in the morning cursing the Yankees so bitterly dispelled that illusion, and in a tremor of terror he drew back in his watery quarters, crawling in the darkness to the farthest end of the cavern, and feeling the rising water flow over his knees as he waited for what might come next.

“Stay here, Charlie, while I go in. I know he must be here, and if he isn’t drowned by this time it’s just a special Providence, that’s all I have to say.”

Surely that was no unfriendly voice, notwithstanding the oaths of the morning, but still Will did not move until the stranger, who evidently knew every turn and nook of the cavern, was so near to him that the light from the dark lantern fell full upon his face and betrayed him at once. There was a thought of Rose, and the freedom he had almost regained, and then forgettingthe friendly tones, Will gave a low, bitter moan and stretching out his hands, said imploringly,

“Kill me here as well as anywhere, and let the suspense be ended.”

“Kill you, my boy?” and the stranger spoke cheerily as he bent over poor Will and rubbed his clammy hands. “What should I killyoufor? I’ve had my eyes on you ever since yesterday evening, when I saw you creeping under the brushwood, and knew you were hunting for this cave. The ‘Refuge of Safety,’ I call it, and it has proved so to many a poor devil who like yourself has taken shelter here. I have never known one to fail of reaching the happy land when once they got so far as this, so cheer up, my man. Paul Haverill can swear a string of swears about the Yanks which will reach from here to Richmond, if necessary, and then when the hounds are thrown off the track he can turn round and save the poor hunted rascal’s life. You are among your friends, so come out from this puddle. You must be wetter than a rat. There’s a spring under the rocks, and it rises in a rain so as to fill the cave sometimes. Here, Charlie, give us that shawl, his teeth are fairly chattering.”

Thus talking, the stranger, who had announced himself as Paul Haverill, led Will out to where the boy Charlie stood, holding a bright plaid shawl in his hand, and looking curiously at the worn, drooping, sorry figure emerging from the cave. It was a woman’s shawl, Will knew, but it was very soft and warm, and he wrapt it closely round him, for he was shaking with cold, and his tattered garments were wringing wet. Very few words were spoken, and those in a whisper, as they went cautiously down the mountain until they reached what seemed to be a road winding among the hills. Thisthey did not follow, but, striking into the field or pasture land beside it, kept to the right, and at a safe distance from it, lest some straggler might be abroad, and meet them face to face. Will Mather was enough acquainted with Southern customs not to be surprised to find here in the mountain wilds a substantial and even handsome-looking building, which, with its white walls and green blinds, seemed much like the farm-houses in New England. There was a light shining from the windows, and a woman’s brisk step was heard as they went toward the door; Paul Haverill coughing, to give warning of his approach.

“All right!” was the pass-word by which they entered, and Will soon stood in the wide hall which ran through the entire building, and opened in the rear upon a broad piazza.

“Better take him to Miss Maude’s room,” the woman said, and Will followed on to an upper chamber, which, he would have known at once belonged to a young lady.

It was not as elegantly furnished as his own sleeping apartment at home, but it bore unmistakable marks of taste and refinement; while the air of pure gentle womanhood, which pervaded it, brought Rose very vividly before him.

“This is my niece’s room, Maude De Vere,” Mr. Haverill explained, when they were alone, and Will was drying himself before the fire, kindled by the woman who had admitted them, and who, Will saw, was a mulatto. “My niece is not at home now,” he continued. “She is in South Carolina; has been gone several months on a visit to old Judge Tunbridge, her mother’s uncle. I’m her mother’s brother, and she and the boy Charlie have lived with me since the first year of the war. Their father was Captain De Vere, from North Carolina, and waskilled at the first Bull Run. Nelly, their mother, never held up her head after that. I was with her when she died, and brought the children home. Maude is twenty now, and Charlie fourteen. I am their guardian. Maude is Union, Charlie secesh, but safe. They have a great deal of property here and there, though how it will come through the war, the Lord only knows.”

Will was glad to see that his host was inclined to talk on without waiting for answers, and he kept quiet, while Mr. Haverill continued:

“I dare say you wonder to find a chap like me among people who are so bitter against you Yankees, and I sometimes wonder at myself. I am South Carolina born, and ought to be foremost in the rebellion; but hanged if I can see that it is right. Why,Imight as well set up a government of my own, here on the Oak Plantation, and refuse to come under any civilized laws. Mind, though, I don’t think the South all wrong,—not a bit of it. The Northdidbully us, and the election of Mr. Lincoln was particularly obnoxious to the majority here, but we had no right to secede, and you did your duty trying to drive us back. For a spell I kept quiet,—didn’t take either side; or if I did, I wanted the South to beat, as all my interests are here. But when our folks got to abusing their prisoners so shamefully, and told so many lies by way of deceiving us fellows who live among the hills and only get the news once or twice a week, I changed my politics, and after the day when I found one of my neighbors, and the best man that ever breathed, too,hungto a tree like a dog, with the word ‘Abolitionist’ pinned to his coat, I made a vow that every energy I had should be given to caring for and helping; just such wretches as you, and if I’ve helped one I’ve helped athousand. Why, at least a hundred have slept in this very room,—Maude’s room; for, as I told you, she is Union to the backbone, and led one chap across the mountain herself. She is a regular Di Vernon, and is not afraid of the very de’il. When she went away she bade me put them in here, as the room least liable to suspicion. To the folks around me I am the roughest kind of a Secessionist, and I suppose nobody can beat me swearing about the Yankees, just to hoodwink ’em, you know. I suppose that’s wrong; my wife would say so; she was a saint when she was here,—she is an angel now. She died five years ago,—before the war broke out; andLois, the woman you saw, has been my housekeeper since. I shouldn’t like the North to take her from me. They tried it once,—when a squad of ’em ransacked my house,—and I was sick in bed. Maude threatened to blow their brains out: and, sir, she would have done it, too, if the scamps hadn’t let Lois alone.

“I don’t agree with your folks on the nigger question, though none of mine has run away since the Proclamation, which I did not like. They know, too, they are free, or will be when the Yankees come, for I took pains to tell them, and gave them liberty to cut stick for the Federal lines as soon as they pleased; but they staid, and great help I find them in the business I’m carrying on. They are constantly on the lookout for runaways or refugees, and are quite as good as bloodhounds to scent one. They told me aboutyou, and I watched and saw you go into that cave, which is on my land, and which few know about, or if they do they think it a springhole, and never dream that anybody can hide in there. Somebody else must have seen you, too, for word came that a man was hiding in the mountains, and as the acknowledged leader of as hard a set as ever hunted a Yankee, I went with’em to find you, and carried in my pocket that bacon and corn bread which I managed to drop into the cave when I sat with my back against it. I knew you must be hungry, and it might be some time before I could come to your aid. We didn’t find the chap; but to-morrow they’ll be at it again, and so, while I help ’em hunt for a man about your build, you will stay in the room in Lois’s charge. Maude has a good many gimcracks here, such as books and things, which may amuse you. She is coming home by and by. The house is very different then. You ought to see Maude. We are very proud of her. That’s her picture, only not half so good-looking,” and he pointed to a small oil painting hanging above the mantel.

It was a splendid head, and the glossy black hair bound about it in heavy braids gave it a still more regal look. The eyes, too, were black, but very soft and gentle in their expression, though something about them gave the impression that they might flash and blaze brilliantly under excitement. It was a beautiful face, and Will did not wonder that his host was proud of his niece,—prouder even than of the pale-faced, delicate boy, who next day, while the hunt for the runaway went on among the mountains, tried to entertain Will Mather by telling him of his old home in North Carolina, and how happy they were there before the war came and took his father away.

“I don’t see it in the light Uncle Paul and sister do,” Charlie said. “I don’t want them to catch and torment the prisoners, or murder folks who don’t think as they do; but Idowant our side to succeed, and when I hear of a victory I say ‘Hurrah for the Confederacy!’ I can’t help it when I think of father, who was killed by the Yankees, and all the trouble the war has brought. I’mwilling to work like a dog for the refugees and prisoners, and I’d die sooner than betray one, but if I was a man I’d join Mr. Davis’s army sure.”

The pale face of the boy was flushed all over, and his dark eyes burned with Southern fire as he frankly avowed his sentiments, and Will Mather could not repress a smile at this noble specimen of a Southern rebel.

“I like you, my boy, for your frankness,” he said, “and when the war is over, I shall have to send for you to come North and be cured of your treason.”

“It is nottreason,” and the boy stamped his girlish foot. “It is not treason any more than the views held by the Revolutionary soldiers. Didn’t the colonies secede from England, and does anybody call Washington a traitor now? I tell you it issuccesswhich decides the nature of the thing. If we succeed, future historians will speak of us as patriots, as a persecuted people, who gave our lives in defence of our homes and firesides.”

“You won’t succeed, my poor boy. The Confederacy is gasping its last breath. You will be conquered at the last, and then what have you gained?”

“Nothing,—nothing but ruin!” and the tears poured over the white face of this defender of Southern rights.

Soon recovering himself, however, he exclaimed, proudly:

“We may be conquered, but not subjugated. You can’t do that with all your countless hordes of men, and your millions of money. The North can never subjugate the South. We may lay down our arms because we have no other alternative, but we shall still think the same, and feel the same as we do now.”

Here was a curious study for Will Mather, who was surprised to find such maturity of thought and so strong determination in one so young and frail.

“No wonder it is hard to conquer a people composed of such elements,” he thought, and he was about to continue the conversation when he was startled by a loud blast from a horn among the hills.

“They’ve caught some one. They always do that as a kind of exultation,” the boy exclaimed, wringing his hands, and evincing as much distress as he had heretofore shown bitterness against the opposing party.

It was a poor refugee from a neighboring county, whom, in spite of Paul Haverill’s precautions, they had found in a hollow tree, and whom they brought more dead than alive down to the Oak Plantation, amid vociferous cries of “Tar and feather him!” “Hang him to a sour-apple tree!” “Give him a taste of the halter!” “Make him an example to all other sneaking Yankee sympathizers!”

With his face as white as marble, and his lips set firmly together, Paul Haverill stood in the midst of the noisy group which he tried to quiet.

“Let us try him by jury,” he said, and something in his voice reassured the frightened, haggard wretch, who had seen his house burned down and his son shot before his very eyes, and of course expected no mercy.

The trial by jury proved popular, and then Paul Haverill suggested that a judge be chosen in the person of some one who had lost a near friend in the war, and was of course competent to mete out full justice to the criminal—“Charlie, for instance,” and his eye fell on the boy, who had joined the crowd and was standing close by the prisoner. The boy caught his uncle’s meaning at once, and exclaimed:

“Yes, letmebe the judge. My father was killed at Bull Run. My mother died of grief. Surely I may decide.”

Charlie De Vere was a favorite with the men, who knew how staunch a Confederate he was, and, waiving the trial for want of time, they said:

“Charlie shall decide whether we hang, drown, whip, or tar and feather the prisoner at the bar.”

Then, with far more energy and fire than had characterized his vindication of the South, Charlie De Vere pleaded for the criminal, that they wouldlet him go. “Just this once, for father’s sake, and mine, and Maude’s,” he said; and, at the mention of Maude, the dark brows began to clear, and the scowling faces grew more lenient in their expression, for Maude De Vere was worshiped by the rough men of the mountains, who, though they knew her sympathies were on the Union side, made an exception in her favor, and held her person and opinions sacred. Forhersake, they would let their captive go, giving him warning to leave the neighborhood at once, nor let himself be seen again in their midst while the war lasted.

And thus it chanced that Will Mather had a companion in his wanderings, which were renewed the following day; the boy Charlie acting as guide through the most dangerous part of the way, and at last bidding him good-bye, with great tears in his eyes, as he said:

“I hope you won’t be caught; but I don’t know, the woods are full of our soldiers. Travel at night, and hide through the day. Trust no one, but the negroes; and if you are captured, ask for mercy in sister’s name. Everybody knows Maude De Vere.”

Back to IndexNext